Wikis

=What is a wiki?= =media type="youtube" key="-dnL00TdmLY" height="349" width="425"= =Wikis for Education=

=Wikispaces for K–12 educators= We offer a free upgrade for wikis that are used exclusively for K–12 education. These free, ad-free wikis have all the features of our Plus wikis. They also have our User Creator tool, which will let you create user accounts in bulk, even when your students don’t have email addresses.

If you're not clear on what a //wiki// is, this excellent [|video] from Common Craft explains it in simple terms.

=How do I upgrade to a free, ad-free K–12 wiki?=
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Under Settings, select **Subscription**.
 * 4) Scroll to the bottom of the page and follow the **Request Your Free Upgrade Now** link.

If you’re not sure whether your wiki is on the K–12 Plus plan, go to **Manage Wiki** > **Subscriptions**. After **Plan**, you should find the text, “Your wiki is currently on our **Plus** plan. Your Plus plan wiki is free, compliments of Wikispaces.”

If it does not say this, you can request a complimentary upgrade to Plus for K–12 education when you follow the **Request Your Free Upgrade Now** link at the bottom of the page.

Any time you want to create a new K–12 wiki, go to [].

=Does my wiki qualify for the free K–12 plan?= Our offer applies to any wiki that is used exclusively for K–12 educational use. K–12 means pre-kindergarten through secondary school. It is available worldwide to teachers, students, homeschoolers, and other educators. This offer is not available to universities and higher education (if you are looking for our free **Higher Education** plan, go [|here]). Our [|regular pricing] is designed so that our service is accessible to non-profits as well as individuals and companies.

=How can I create accounts for my students?= Once your wiki is on our free K–12 Plus plan, you can create up to 100 accounts at a time with our User Creator tool. You will **not** need to provide email addresses for your students when you use the User Creator Tool:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Under People, select **User Creator**.
 * 4) Choose the wiki you would like to add the users to.
 * 5) Enter your list of users as text, or upload an excel or .csv file with usernames and passwords. Email addresses aren't required to create accounts. Keep in mind that every Wikispaces username must be unique. Try using numbers, or initials, or a first name-last name combination to create unique usernames.
 * 6) The User Creator will guide you through the process of setting up your accounts. If you have any questions, send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

If you have more than 100 students, just go through the User Creator process with different lists of 100 names.

=My students already have accounts. Can I add them to my wiki?= Yes. If your students have already created accounts on Wikispaces or had accounts created for another wiki/class, you can invite them to your wiki. To bulk invite them to your wiki just follow these steps:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Under People select **Invite People**.
 * 4) Enter up to 100 students' usernames or email addresses, separated by commas or line breaks.
 * 5) Press **Send**.

The next time the student logs into their account (or checks their email, if the account is associated with a confirmed email address) they will be able to view and accept the invitation.

=How do I reorder my list of pages?= Your default navigation bar contains a Page List widget that lists the first ten pages of your wiki in alphabetical order. If you decide that you want to arrange it differently, you can click the **Edit Navigation** link and delete the blue Page List widget. Then you can edit the navigation bar just like you would edit a wiki page to add links and explanatory text. If you need assistance, our [|video tours] will show you how to edit a page.

If you want to get your default navigation back, click the Widget icon in the editor bar (it looks like a little TV) then click **Wikispaces**, then **List of Wiki Pages**. If you want to show more than 10 pages, just change the Number of Pages before you embed your page list.

=How do I set my wiki to Private?= If you want to make it so that only members of your wiki — you and your students — can see the work that is posted to your wiki, you want to set your wiki to //Private//. If you want your wiki to be visible to the public, so that your students' family and friends can see their work, but still keep anyone but wiki members from editing pages, you need to set your wiki to //Protected//. You can make either change on your Permissions page:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Under People, select **Permissions**.
 * 4) Select Public, Protected, or Private and hit **Update**.

=How can I keep students from editing my page?= Just set the permissions for the page to **Locked** and only you (and other organizers of the wiki) will be able to edit it:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Select **Pages**.
 * 4) Check the pages that you don’t want students to edit.
 * 5) Hit the **Lock** button.

If you ever want to open that page up to student edits, it’s just as easy to unlock the page:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Select **Pages**.
 * 4) Check the pages that you want to unlock.
 * 5) Hit the **Unlock** button.

You can also lock an individual page by selecting **Lock** from the down-arrow menu on the Page tab.

=Can I restrict viewing or editing a page to a single student?= Not at this time. You can change your wiki-level permissions, but all wiki members will have the same type of access.

=How do I change the look of my wiki?= Change your theme:
 * 1) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 2) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 3) Under Settings, select **Look and Feel**.
 * 4) Select **Themes and Colors**.
 * 5) Choose one of our premade themes and color palettes, or hit **Preview and Customize** to set your own custom colors.
 * 6) When you're happy with your selections, hit Apply.

Change your logo:
 * 1) Before you begin, have a .jpg, .png, or .gif of your logo ready, set to the correct size (we recommend 140 X 48 pixels). The logo will be displayed at its native resolution; in some themes, very tall or wide logos may push the page contents off the screen. When a custom logo is applied, it will replace both the bonsai logo //and// the wiki name, so we recommend putting your wiki name in the logo image itself.
 * 2) Navigate to your wiki.
 * 3) Select **Manage Wiki**.
 * 4) Under Settings, select **Look and Feel**.
 * 5) Scroll down to Logo and hit **Browse** to upload your file.
 * 6) Hit **Save**.

You can see this in action in our [|video tour] on personalizing your wiki.

=How do I add a calendar, spreadsheet, etc. to a page?= While you are editing a page, click the Widget icon in the editor bar (it looks like a little TV), then select the type of media you want to embed from the menu. The widget tool will give you instructions on where to get the chunk of code that you'll need. You can see this in action in our [|video tour] on adding widgets.

=My students are editing the same page at the same time and some changes are lost. Do you have any advice?= If two people edit the same page at the same time, we will keep track of both sets of changes. Your students will be notified if someone else is editing the page at the same time. If there are no conflicts in the students' changes, both sets of edits will be seamlessly merged into the page. If the changes do conflict, the following will happen:
 * 1) When the first user saves his changes, the second user will receive a notification of this and will be able to view the changes.
 * 2) The second user can view the changes to remove the conflict if she chooses.
 * 3) If there is still a conflict when the second user saves the page, she will be notified that she is about to overwrite the first user's changes. She will have the option to continue or cancel.

If either student's edits are incorrectly overwritten, they can find their work or revert to an earlier version of the page on the **History** tab. If you still have problems, email us at help@wikispaces.com.

=Is there a way to disable the messaging system on Wikispaces?= There is no way to disable the messaging system. However, as an educator, you have a couple of options:
 * 1) You can change the messaging preferences for each of your students by logging into their accounts and going to My Account. There you can set **Receive Private Messages From** to **No One**. Learn more about our messaging system.
 * 2) You and your school or district can check out Wikispaces Private Label. Your community will get their own separate wiki environment in which you can create an unlimited number of users and wikis, and you will have the option to turn off the messaging system for the entire site. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, [|read more].

=Where can I see some examples of other teachers using Wikispaces?= Have a look at the educational wikis wiki. It's a wiki, too, so you can contribute your own examples and ideas. You may also want to check out the [|Wiki Walk-Through] from TeachersFirst.

=I'm presenting at a conference. Do you have any material for me?= Giving a talk? You can distribute this [|getting started PDF]. Email us at help@wikispaces.com if you have any questions.

=I’m holding a training session to show people what wikis can do. Do you have any tools I can use?= Our PDPresenterToolkit wiki is a self-contained professional development presentation that will help you describe and explore the role of wikis in K-12 education. If you would like to give this presentation from your own wiki, let us know at help@wikispaces.com.

//Still have questions? Send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.//

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